I went to San Francisco tonight, for a cocktail party and a renegade ambient party. This involved:

• 30 minutes of looking for parking around the cocktail party before giving up.
• Nearly broadsiding some dolt on Fulton who crossed my lane of traffic from my right-hand side to make a left turn. Fortunately there was space, I was looking ahead, and I'm a deadly ninja, so I slowed quickly and made a right-hand turn into the street he was coming out of.
• An hour or so of climbing up and around Sutro Heights looking for the party. Eventually I made my way down, called the voicemail, and discovered the party didn't start until midnight. Whoops.
• Taking my book and camp chair and sitting on the deserted end of Ocean Beach for a bit.
• Thinking "Huh, I'd really like to go to this party, maybe parking has opened up".
• Giving up after 20 minutes of circling and going home.

Life is too short to spend time in San Francisco. The people who live there rarely leave, and often forget there's a world outside that seven-mile square. They try not to move their cars if they can help it, and they time their grocery shopping according to traffic and parking patterns. If you're a San Francisco Person, that all appears to be worth it; but I'm not.

I did have a great day, though. My friend Bob taught the aikido class, and I'd mentioned I've been needing exercise, so he used me to demonstrate techniques (we train well together) and I more or less only took falls for the first 30 minutes of class. Then a one-hour ride down to Boulder Creek to drop off a coffee press (which seems like a lot, but bear in mind we ride that route just for fun, so for an errand it's no trouble). And then the late-night meandering through the woods. Mmm, tired.